Ep #162: A Business Worth Failing For

You are listening to episode 162 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you create a business worth failing for. Let’s go. 

Welcome to the Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m. Amy Latta, let’s dive in.

Hello, my coaches. How are you? It’s the middle of December. How did we even get here? I don’t understand. This year feels like it was one month long and 10 years long. Is that just how the 2020s are going to be? It started with the pandemic and now every year is just going to simultaneously fly by and be 10 years long.

Got it. Okay. It’s like every month is a year. Every year is a decade. Mm-hmm, so it’s the middle of December 2022. We’re wrapping up this year and we’re looking towards 2023 and I’ve been doing a lot of work. And these past couple of episodes, you know, we’ve been talking about it, we’ve been talking about failing and the willing willingness to feel the hard emotions when it comes to your business, really confronting a lot of the online business regalia that we see, the pomp and the circumstance that anybody can “do-itness,” and then the reality of what it really looks like behind the scenes.

Speaking of which, behind the scenes are we friends on Instagram? Because if you have not seen the 20,000 invitations I’ve already sent out on social media, and on my email list, if you’re listening to this podcast, I am doing something super-special behind the scenes in my Instagram stories only.

And only to people who are my close friends. Did you know there’s such a thing as a close friends list on Instagram so that you have your stories that go out to everybody, and then you have stories that go out only to people you designate as close friends? And I’m getting super-detailed behind the scenes on me confronting all of that online business propaganda that’s been in my brain for the past five to 10 years, how I am bringing my corporate marketing background back up to the surface. The very thing that used to shut me down is actually what’s fueling me forward.

And also, per last week’s episode with Krista St-Germain on how I am failing every single day. So, here’s what you need to do. You need to make sure you’re following me on Instagram at: @iamamylatta and then once you’re on there, send me a DM with your Instagram handle. The only downside to setting up a close friends list it’s an incredibly manual process.

There’s no easy way to do it. You have to hit like three different links once you’re in your profile, and then you have to manually type in each Instagram handle. We’ve got over 200 people as of this recording, so by the time you hear it, for sure, it’s going to be over three into the four. That’s manually added by me and my VA.

There’s no mass-migration. It’s a very personal process, but you want to see what I’m doing behind there. And, and this episode today is really going to highlight for you the why behind it all. Okay? So, make sure you’re on my close friends list, like follow my profile on Instagram at @iamamylatta and then send me in a DM, your Instagram handle, and I will add you to close friends.

And all that happens is you get more stories. There’ll be stories that have a green circle around them instead of a pink circle around them. Those are the ones only going to my close friends, and I’m only putting you on there if you personally say add me. And you’re going to get some really good stuff.

I’m really like showing you all of the behind the scenes of how somebody who makes multiple six-figures does that in a way that’s not slimy. That’s not skeezy. Or here’s the other thing– if I find myself like engaging in slimy and skeezy what it looks like for me to really confront that for myself and then decide what I want to do, this is important stuff that we’re talking about here, and this is going to totally fuel our 2023.

We were totally changing the conversation of how, make good money, amazing money, life changing money as a life coach, changing lives and doing it in a way that’s not, you better act fast. “Get in now, or you’re going to miss the boat. It’s now or never.” Everybody else is doing it. That is very persuasive and a little culty way of doing marketing. We’re not doing that.

Okay. Alright, so make sure you’re on my close friends list. Here is something that we have so far left out of the conversation of being real behind the scenes and your willingness to fail and institute a failure plan, like what Krista and I talked about in our interview last week.

And that is who or what are you failing for and is it worth it to you? So, let’s, let’s enter this conversation through a side door. And that is coaching that I’m going through myself, you all know, if you do not know by now, I do not ask anything of you that I have not already done or am in the process of doing myself, and I always share with you the coaching that I’m receiving and not like the polished, you know, the after-effect where it’s all polished and shiny and I’ve completely glossed over the really hard work.

No, I share with you the nitty gritty because I think it’s so important for you to understand that I’m a human being just like you, so are all the other mentors out there, whether they show you or not, I’m going to show you.

I know a big piece of my work in these next few months is really upleveling my thinking and feeling and my doing my acting as the CEO. Not of the business I have now, but of the multimillion-dollar coaching business that I have here that is Amy Latta Coaching.

Like, I’ve got the multi six-figure business thinking down. I’ve nailed it. I’ve been here for a few years, and all the pieces are there except for this one. So, if you want to know what I’m working on, it’s the really good, juicy stuff of how I see myself, my identity, my concept of myself as a multimillion-dollar CEO, not as this mom who’s sitting in her office and making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, that feels really good and feels really amazing, but there’s also a lot of like apologetic-ness about that. There’s, there’s a lot of priority work going on over here. There’s a lot of thinking and feeling about how I feel, and this is what actually came up.

So, it’s super fun stuff. Super uncomfortable. Lots of tears. Did you know you were going to cry so much as an entrepreneur? Nobody told me. Well, nobody had to tell me because I’m a crier. But yeah, sometimes it’s next level.

So, I have two coaches right now. I have a personal life coach and then I do have a business coach. My business coach and I are working on a lot of the strategy and opportunities in my business that I haven’t before opened up and what does it really look like to have a lot more fun in really doing what I want to do? Not necessarily what’s been modeled for me as like this is the only formula that will get you there.

There’s lots of paths, my friend. There’s lots of ways to get where you want to go. There is not one okay. And my personal coach, honestly, I hired her because I have a lot of personal stuff, like non-business stuff going on behind the scenes. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, and yet somehow, I end up getting coached on my business almost every damn week. Are we not surprised?

It’s almost like how you show up in your life is how you show up in your business and how you show up in your business is how you show up in your life. It’s super weird like that. So, I was describing a situation whereas she reflected back to me, I was making it very clear my feelings about the other person and even about me as we operate in and around in my business.

But she pointed out to me, she’s like, “I don’t hear you at all talking about your thoughts about your business in this conversation.” She’s like, “it’s very how you want to feel and how you want to feel about the other people in this, this conversation. But you haven’t talked at all how you want to feel about your business or how you do feel about your business.”

Like I’m having a conversation where we are talking about my business as a whole and just the relationships inside of that with the different people that I operate with. you know, forward facing, behind, you know, not behind the scenes, but you know, business facing, contract work, all of that, but never once in that conversation was I talking about my thoughts and my feelings about the business itself.

So, here’s the cold, hard truth, and here’s the thing. It is one that I’ve talked about on the podcast before, but it’s been a hot minute, and I raised my hand here too. We need to remember and visit this regularly because it’s so important and that is: how is your relationship with your business? Because how your business is doing is so much more than what’s on your balance sheet or what’s on your calendar.

How your business is doing is how you talk about your business, how you think about your business, how you feel about your business, how your business is doing is the story of your relationship. And that story of your relationship is way more important than anything else.

It’s like any relationship in your life. How your marriage is doing is how you talk about your marriage, how any of your relationships are, are how you think about them and how you feel about them.

That is how the relationship is. Like, you can give me all of the information that you want, but how you tell the story is the definition of your relationship. Relationships are your thoughts about the things, not actually the things.

Now, those of you who are putting in a lot of work and not yet seeing the results are going to want to tell me, “actually, Amy, I have proof I don’t have a business if I don’t have clients,” and I want to say, “says who?”

Now, it might be factual. Let’s get some facts out of the way that if you don’t report a certain level of income and you are claiming business expenses on your taxes, you can only do that for so many years before it’s possible that the IRS will say, “I’m sorry, your business is not a business. It is a hobby.”

And also, please consult your tax accountant because that is not who or what I am. I don’t know how many years; I don’t know what level of income. I don’t know what percentage of expenses you can claim for before the IRS says, “sorry, you have a hobby, not a business.”

It is possible that this business coach over here, or this guru that you’ve been following over here, or your uncle who’s been running businesses his whole life might tell you that you don’t have a business if you don’t have clients or a certain level of activity. All of that might be factually true, but none of that dictates how you tell the story is the most important factor because who wants to go to bat for and fail and flail every step of the way for something you think doesn’t even exist or isn’t good enough or is failing you? How you tell the story dictates how you show up in your business day in and day out.

If you tell the story of being a long-suffering wife who gives and gives, and gives and never gets anything in return, how are you gonna show up in the energy of making offers and sharing with the world how you can help them if you show up in the energy of being like a super-needy girlfriend who needs her brand new business, to constantly tell her how pretty she is and how smart she is.

And yes, you do look amazing in that outfit. You need all this external validation. That’s the kind of energy that you’re fueling your offers from and how you communicate with your audience and like what’s the energy of showing up to a business that you don’t even think is real or exists, like, “hi, I’m showing up in my imaginary business today. Here I am. None of this is real. All of this is fake. Do you want to work with me?”

That’s how those offers are being fueled, that undercurrent, that energy. It doesn’t even matter what you say, that’s what’s like dripping in those offers. I know a lot of people are very resistant to telling the story of their business as they want it to be, as opposed to how they believe it is in this exact moment.

Like Amy, “here are the facts. There are no consults on the calendar. I’ve worked 40 hours a week and I’ve made $2,000 this year. This is not a business.” When I coach this in path to a 100k, normally, it almost always comes down to, I don’t want to be delusional. I’ve been in a relationship where I give and give and I was a sucker, and I’m not going to be a sucker again.

But listen, you’ve never been in a relationship unless you have a dog. You’ve never been in a relationship like the relationship you have with your business, because the best news is, is your business never cheating on you. It’s never going to say mean things about you behind your back.

You might be, about it, but it’s never going to do that to you, like ever. Your business exists solely for you, and it is the utmost conditional love. Your business is like a devoted dog who will go to the ends of the earth for you. It doesn’t matter how you treat it. It is always just there waiting for you to love it.

And it exists. You are not delusional to say it exists if it doesn’t match some outsider’s definition of this is what it means to have a business. Now, if you see your business as a hobby, if you are treating it that way, if you are only showing up to it on occasion, if you were always prioritizing everything and everyone else in your life ahead of your business, then it might be a hobby. But that of course is based on how you think and feel about your business.

Going back a few episodes to, really talking about online business influencers and the way they’ve marketed their programs to make you money in business. You know, they’re marketing this is like, “this is super easy, and anybody can do it. Yeah, it’s going to be hard, but I did it and so can you.”

And the marketing is not setting you up for the reality of business, which is a lot of failure. No one has created a massively successful business, even those online business influencers without a ton of failure. I love thinking about all of the famous businesspeople that we know, all of the famous creators that are out there, we like to think that people are overnight successes, and a lot of times those overnight successes are like 10, 12 years in the making. Hi, that’s me.

I didn’t make a hundred thousand dollars in my business until like my sixth or seventh year. Walt Disney was fired from a Missouri newspaper for not being creative. Hi, Walt Disney! Yeah, and did you know he was from Missouri? It’s like one of those small-town hometown claims we like to have.

We are the home of the original Walt Disney. Not creative enough, never mind that he founded all of Disney and created Steamboat Willie and Snow White. In all of those original 1920s, thirties, and forties creative endeavors.

Bill Gates dropped out of college, and he had a failed business venture before he started Microsoft.

Michael Jordan, one of the most famous basketball players of all time in the entire world, cut from his high school basketball team.

Steve Jobs founded Apple, was fired from Apple. The very company he built and started only to come back and introduce the world to the iPhone.

The founders of Home Depot, I love this …they started so many stores. It was like four guys living together on their credit cards, you know, pulling no salary of their own, flailing and failing all over the place. And even once they got Home Depot, I don’t know how many iterations, I always forget how many iterations before Home Depot was launched in like 79 in Atlanta, but that was a failure.

They were giving people money to shop at their flagship store, and it wasn’t even working. They were literally handing people dollar bills to come shop in their store. And people were like, no, thank you. Home Depot, one of the biggest companies in the world today.

I love this. This happened just this past week that I’m recording this episode. There’s an entire thread on Twitter where a newish author named Chelsea Banning, set up a book signing. She had like 30, 40 people say they were coming, and she was all excited, and she got to the bookstore all excited and all prepared for all these people to show up, and then like two people showed, and in this Twitter post, it now has this long thread of all these super-famous authors who posted in her thread of like, there I hosted a signing, and no one showed stories. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Cheryl Strayed, even Henry Winkler, that’s the Fonz from Happy Days, retweeted her tweet and encouraging her to just keep going. You have to fail more often in order to succeed.

Albert Einstein, who was kicked out of schools only like considered one of the smartest human beings ever to live, was getting kicked out of his schools, said, “failure is really just success in progress,” and yet we act like it’s the dirtiest word ever.

So, here’s where we tie these two pieces together. Let me ask, are you willing to do that for someone or something you view as being in a terrible relationship with? Are you willing to go to the ends of the earth for a business you think owes you big time? Are you willing to fall flat on your face over and over for something you don’t think is even working?

Are you willing to get your hands really dirty problem solving and getting into the nitty gritty of testing and trying for something you only feel kind of meh about? I mean, if I’m being honest, no. If I think it’s me versus my business, I am not going to the end of the earth for it. But if I think it’s me and my business and we are in this together and it’s unconditional love and belief in each other, Oh, hell yeah. I am in.

Like I think about this, I would take a bullet for my own kids, my husband, my sister, my mom, my niece, because no matter what they do, no matter how many times they don’t show up for me the way I want them to, how many times I feel disappointment or frustration, or even anger, my love for them is unconditional and I would absolutely sacrifice my life for them in a moment.

But for like an acquaintance, are someone in my life that I don’t love on that level. No, probably not. I’m not sacrificing myself or all my feels for you, buddy. I’m not jumping in front of an oncoming bus to save something that I’m just kind of like, “eh, what have you done for me lately?”

So how do you tell the story of your business, and do you see your business as a business worth failing for? Because that’s the mental shift to engage in this week if you weren’t already. Stop asking your business, what have you done for me lately? And instead ask, what does it need? How do you think about your business?

What are your thoughts? Like grab pen and paper, write down all of your thoughts about your business. How do you feel about it? How do you want to think and feel about it? And what does it need from you?

Don’t paint yourself as the long-suffering wife and don’t let your business be the long-suffering wife. Treat it and yourself with love and compassion you both deserve.

So, here’s a super fun activity. I actually have the path to 100k Mastermind members writing letters to their business this week, defining their relationship, proclaiming their love for it. Because I also have them working on their fail plan really hard this month.

The two things go hand in hand because we’re only willing to fail so much based on how we feel about the thing we’re failing for, and I teach you both because these two things go hand in hand. How to think completely differently about yourself and your business, your self-concept, your identity, your thoughts and feelings about your business and the work that you’re doing, and how to take new action in your business that creates new results.

You need both, and you get both with me. You in? Of course you’re in. And of course, if you haven’t made at least $5,000 in the past six months, then Free to Paid Coach is the program for you. It’s open all the time. Just go and like get enrolled and start doing that work. Now, if you’ve made at least $5,000 and like your belief that you are a six-figure coach, like you believe it’s gonna happen, then path to a 100k is for you, and we are actually enrolling right now for the next round that starts in February.

We are enrolling for the February class of Path to 100k, so, if you’re ready for that work, reach out to me and say, let’s get applied and let’s get a consult call with you.

If you’ve already made at least six figures, then let’s work one-on-one. I have a couple options. So, reach out to amy@amyamylata.com and let’s get you in the program that meets the needs where you are right now. And like every week when you see this podcast, hit social media, share it into your stories, and tag me at @iamamylatta, and share what you needed to hear today.

Let your people know how this work is changing you and how it will change for them. I cannot wait to hear what’s landing for you today, and I’m so excited to see what you create in the world.

Talk to you next week.

Coach, it’s time to sign your first free client, your first paid client, your next client, and to learn how to do it consistently and having a hell of a lot of fun along the way. This is exactly what you’re going to do in Free to Paid Coach. It’s the only program giving you step-by-step what to do to become a paid coach and step-by-step how to handle the roller coaster emotions that come with doing what you need to do to become a paid coach.

If you know you can’t not do this life coaching thing, but believing that you can do it, handling rejection and remembering how to do all of those things shuts you down, the Free to Paid Coach Community is waiting for you. Find everything that you’re looking for inside. It’s only $1,000. Payments are available, and then you’re in forever.

Visit www.amylatta.com/ftpc to join us right now. See you inside. Let’s get paid, coach.

Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.